Its crunch time again - the first of many more to come this year - and I once again find myself crouched in front of my computer, updating progress and files and proofing pages.
Naturally all the normal people have gone home and eaten their dinners and gone to bed; I envy them.
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Gentleman Alone
by Pablo Neruda (Translated by Mike Topp)
The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.
Radiant summer brings out the lovers
In melancholy regiments,
Fat and thin and happy and sad couples;
Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon,
There is a continual life of pants and panties,
A hum from the fondling of silk stockings,
And women's breasts that glisten like eyes.
The salary man, a…